Ash Wednesday turned deadly in Parkland, Florida when a lone gunman opened fire at the Stoneman Douglas High School, killing 17 and wounding more than 14. Some of the injured remain in critical condition today.
The shooting deaths of two high school students in the small western Kentucky town of Benton have left residents and surrounding communities in shock. Teachers, parents, faith and government leaders have spent the past few days trying to determine the cause as well as solutions to the violence.
I was sent to the home shortly after the death to comfort a family I had never met. The case sheet read: young, male, black, single, Baptist, terminal cancer. • Me enviaron a la casa poco después de la muerte para consolar a una familia que yo no conocía. La ficha de datos decía: joven, hombre, negro, soltero, bautista, cáncer terminal.
The collegiate ministry network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will launch new curriculum addressing gun violence at UKirk National Summit, a pre-event to the 223rd General Assembly (2018) in St. Louis, June 16-23.
The small community of Aztec, New Mexico, is still reeling from last week’s shooting at a local high school that left two students and the alleged gunman dead. San Juan County authorities say William Atchison, 21, planned the attack at Aztec High School and had purchased a 9mm Glock last month.
Two documentaries produced in collaboration with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) and other Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have been selected to film at prominent U.S. film festivals.
It’s been nearly two weeks since hundreds of rounds were fired into a large crowd at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas, killing 59 people and injuring 489, resulting in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
While authorities try to determine what led 64-year-old Stephen Paddock to open fire on a crowd of people in Las Vegas Sunday night, Presbyterian Church leaders and pastors are reaching out to congregations and those impacted by the tragedy.
Las Vegas awoke this morning in a state of shock following last night’s mass shooting that has left nearly 60 dead and as many as 500 people wounded. The shootings occurred during an outdoor music festival. Police say a lone gunman opened fire on the crowd with an automatic weapon from the nearby Mandalay Bay Hotel.
I was in a morning Bible study when I received the phone call. It was from the father of one of my youth group teens who had called to let me know that his son “B.A.” had been shot. Hearing this news, I felt overcome by disbelief and sadness as I began asking a flurry of questions. Dad calmly replied, “Reverend, he is alive, he isOK; the gunshots were not fatal.” I was thankful and relieved that B.A. was still alive, but then another wave of sadness overtook me as I remembered that two weeks earlier, I had suspended B.A. from youth group activities because he, as a “prank,” had brought a BB gun there and threatened others with it. This happened the week following the massacre at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, so as one can imagine, I did not find his “prank” amusing.
